I did a quick talk called New Year, New You at the FreeAgent engineering all-hands recently. I thought I'd write it up in long form.
It's 2022! 🎉Â
Happy new year everyone! I wanted to do a talk about change, give people some food for thought. I'm not trying to suggest you have to do all or even any of these things, they're just ideas that are in my head.
I read an article recently about how GitLab automates engineering management. My interest was piqued by the title but watching the accompanying video left me wide-eyed. Using Google Docs, the script editor and copy/pasting long alphanumeric IDs doesn't strike me as particularly fun or efficient. It seems like a very high barrier to entry, but I guess it works for them 🤷.
I'm not getting involved in the meetings versus no meetings culture war (you're both right), but on the back of the GitLab article I thought I would write about a way to keep track of the meetings you run.
I recently announced my decision to leave FreeAgent, the company I co-founded in 2007. It's been a difficult decision to make as I love FreeAgent dearly – I’m part of the furniture almost – but it’s the right time for me to hang up my well-worn CTO boots. I wanted to write a few words for posterity, so here are some of my memories from our rollercoaster journey.Â
I was invited by Hao to do an interview about work/life balance on his popular Balance The Grind website recently. I received lots of nice feedback via my LinkedIn post so I thought I’d post the link up on this blog for any readers who don’t inhabit social networks, ‘professional’ ones or otherwise.
Job ads which feature salary bands have been shown to be more inclusive and result in a larger number of applicants. Salary transparency is a staff motivator and increases engagement, so why are most companies still keeping rates secret?
For all the social media, messaging, and productivity apps I have installed, my digital communication is still dominated by email. Sure I use WhatsApp, iMessage, Slack, Basecamp, Twitter, Instagram… but email is the constant that I can’t do without, at work or at home.
I’ve been using Fastmail for around 7 years, and before that I used Gmail. When HEY launched just over a year ago I signed up as soon as I could. Not because Fastmail had flaws, but because I quite like new shiny things, I love Ruby on Rails, and I’m intrigued by the products that Basecamp create. I don’t think Basecamp have the slickest products on the market but they create a narrative around their products and I found the promotion around HEY quite compelling.
I’ve used HEY for almost a year now, so it feels like the right time to reflect on the product. I should admit that I haven’t used HEY exclusively over this time. I did try forwarding all my email into it for a few weeks, but I found it something of a trial by fire and I quickly reverted. Instead I started to move different cohorts of email over to it (newsletters, GitHub notifications, receipts), enough to give me a solid experience of it without committing full time.
I wrote a popular post last year that has had thousands of views, and I think all those first impressions still stand today. What follows is a breakdown of what works for me with HEY, what doesn’t, and why I’ve ultimately decided it’s not for me.
I had a day "out of the office" yesterday (not to be confused with the previous 360 consecutive days out of the physical office since March 13, 2020). I just had a day off, which shouldn't be a particularly big deal. If anything urgent happened I would have received a phone call, otherwise I should easily be able to catch up with things on my return. I filter my email so it's a pleasant place these days, even after a few days without checking. Slack, on the other hand, is a complete disaster zone.
I seem to happen upon this blog post from Sam Altman every year or so and it always resonates with me. 36 thoughts on life from a 30-year-old (at the time) who appears wise beyond his years. Reading it is life detox. So go ahead and cleanse.
